This Is Going to Have to Be Fast . . . And Rock and Roll

If any of you go to Rome in the next few months, I’ll be curious of your impressions. This was my fourth time in seven years, and while the city, of course, was amazing, the people in the service professions were just horrible — sullen, nasty, acting like they could barely tolerate us. This was very different from as late as 2004. An Englishman who lives there says this has all to do with the recession, that people are turned inward and depressed. In any case, this was still a rather interesting time to go because the street was empty of Romans. But do you really want to go to Rome without Romans?

Actually you might, if you’re interested in the archeological sites, etc.

For three days after that, I was in Abruzzo, which was night and day from Rome. The people were absolutely lovely.

Anyhow, onto another subject. There was an animated dinner subject the other day concerning the relative accomplishments of British and American rock and roll. I said they had us beat, that like mercantilism in colonial times, they took our primitive raw materials and made great art with them, that their greatest artists put ours in the shade — the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, Zeppelin, the Kinks . . . This was met with vigorous disagreement.